


Made to Measure

by melissa286



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alderaanian Culture (Star Wars), Angst, F/M, Fashion & Couture, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Incest, Jedi Luke Skywalker, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Road Trips, Shopping, Skywalker Family Drama (Star Wars), Tailoring, Tatooine Culture (Star Wars), Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28247757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melissa286/pseuds/melissa286
Summary: Somewhere betweenThe Empire Strikes BackandReturn of the Jedi,Luke realizes he's going to need to look the part of a proper Jedi Knight when he faces Jabba on Tatooine. Enter a certain Princess with a certain sense of style, and we're off on a shopping trip to a galaxy far, far away. Will the right set of new clothes make Luke feel like a new man?
Relationships: Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Leia Organa/Luke Skywalker
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	Made to Measure

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've started chipping away at my main work in progress, but I really need to clear out some of the smaller stories that are living rent-free in my head. This was meant to be a one-shot, but it looks like it's going to be a two-parter.
> 
> My usual disclaimer applies: I'm only human, and there's no way I can keep up with every bit of media in the _Star Wars_ canon, even if I wanted to. If this subject was covered in some novel, comic, video game, breakfast cereal commercial, etc., then just consider this an alternate universe. For my purposes, all that exists are the theatrical films and my own warped imagination.

“What, never?” asked Leia.

“No, never,” Luke replied.

“What, _never?”_ she continued, incredulous.

“No, _never,”_ he huffed. “Why is that so hard to believe?”

She shrugged. “I don't know; it's just that I've never known anyone our age who's _never..._ I mean, ever?”

“It's just not something we _do_ where I come from,” he said. “I'm not saying there's anything _wrong_ with it.”

Leia pursed her lips and shook her head. “All the exciting things you've done, all the adventures you've had in your short life, and you've never had _any_ new clothes? Not once?”

He sighed, picking up the heap of clothing that covered his bunk and looking around for a place to put it. Seeing none, he unceremoniously dumped it on the floor and sat on the end of the bunk. “I told you, it's just not part of our culture. It's not like we were poor or something. _Nobody_ on Tatooine would buy new clothes, especially for a kid who's just going to grow out of them. Clothing is just... something to keep the weather and the sand out. The clothes I was wearing when I left were the same ones I got at the swap fair two years earlier.”

“Swap fair?” Leia sat down next to Luke, picking up some garments from the floor and folding them in her lap.

“Yeah, twice a year you'd take all your old stuff to the swap fair at Anchorhead, and trade it for somebody else's old stuff.” He grabbed some underclothes out of her pile and hastily folded them himself.

Leia schooled her features to impassivity. It had been one of the earliest lessons in diplomacy she'd learned at her parents' knees, that feeling sorry for someone just because their customs lacked something you held dear was a form of hubris to be avoided. It would be ridiculous to pity someone for lacking something they didn't want. The humans of Tatooine were an eminently practical people, and it only made sense to make the most of every resource. But this was _Luke,_ her dearest friend, and it was hard for her to not want him to have every pleasure she'd ever enjoyed. The procurement of each year's summer and winter wardrobes made for such fond memories. The anticiption, the endless poring over swatches and sketches - even the fittings were an occasion worth standing still for long periods with pins scratching her skin. She'd felt so grown up when her father started asking her opinion on materials and designs for his own wardrobe. In the court of Alderaan, clothes were as much a form of communication as a means of keeping the weather out.

“And since then?” she asked, smoothing the sleeves of a brown jacket.

“Well, it's not like turnover's exactly been low,” he stated matter-of-factly. “When a pilot doesn't make it back to base, their gear goes up for grabs. The Alliance budget would be in a sorry state if they had to buy brand-new uniforms for every recruit.” He casually waved a hand around at the jumble of odd garments littering the room. “That's where all of this came from; the dead men's box. I was hoping to find something that would look right for this mission, maybe with some alterations, you know? There's a cape somewhere in here, I think. But that's why I need your help. You know a lot more about this sort of thing than I do.”

Leia gingerly set the stack of folded clothes back on the floor, measuring her next words carefully. She pushed herself to her feet, pacing a couple of steps before turning to face Luke. “Your instincts are absolutely right. You need to make an _impression._ You need to walk in there looking like the Jedi you are, and you can't do that in something from the... the, ah, recycling box.”

She grabbed his hands and pulled him to his feet. Officiously dusting off his shoulders, she took a few steps around him, looking him up and down. “What you need is something brand-new. Top of the line. Made to measure. Commander Skywalker, I am taking you on an official shopping trip. You couldn't possibly be in better hands.”

A small, conspiratorial smile crept to his lips. “You're enjoying this a little _too_ much.”

“Questioning the motives of your superiors again? That's hardly conduct becoming an officer. Now, let's go get something to eat and draw up our plan of attack.”

Laughing - a rare occurrence these days - he slipped an arm around her waist and swept her out of the room. 

###

In the end, they settled on the Eodan system, a quiet place in the Mid-Rim. Leia thought with a pang of regret, of the great fashion houses of the Core worlds that had dressed her family in days gone by. But it just wasn't worth the risk of being spotted. The capital city of Eodan boasted a relatively limited but well-established garment district, augmented in recent years by an influx of immigrant craftspeople eager to leave behind the tense political atmosphere of the Core. The Imperial forces were notoriously well-dressed, but they employed their own small army of in-house designers and tailor droids. The pair of young Rebels had identified several older establishments that were less likely to be using the newest scanning technology for measuring and fitting; there had been too many cases of people ending up in an Imperial database after being scanned for some unrelated, innocuous purpose. 

An unmarked Rebel ship had dropped them off on the neutral world closest to Headquarters. From there they had caught a public passenger transport heading in the general direction of Eodan, on a route with enough stops and detours to avoid drawing anyone's prolonged attention. (They had also left R2-D2 and C3PO behind, much to the droids' very vocal disapproval - Artoo noisily insisting until the end that he could be as inconspicuous as anybody else). Luke reclined in a seat next to a viewport, his head resting on the cool transparisteel. Although his eyes were closed and his breathing even, Leia could tell he was wide awake. Maybe he was meditating. His sleep had been disturbed since Bespin, she knew. She had pulled strings to get him a single billet wherever they'd been stationed. He'd refused sedatives, quietly completed the minimum required number of psychotherapy sessions and thrown himself into physical therapy with an almost frightening intensity. 

But he still wore the same pinched, haunted look that had marred his face as surely as any battle scar since they'd pulled him into the _Falcon_ after his ordeal with Vader. Whatever that monster had done to him had robbed him of more than his hand, and she silently cursed him for the thousandth time. Luke had dismissed the idea of wearing any disguise on this trip beyond a pair of dark brown contact lenses, because, as he calmly pointed out, he no longer looked like the smiling golden youth in the image attached to his Imperial bounty notice. While it's true she still occasionally woke up in the middle of the night still feeling Vader's viselike grip on her arms as he forced her to watch the destruction of her people, or hearing Han's screams of agony from the holding cell in Cloud City, she didn't feel anything had changed in the deepest core of herself. Luke... she wasn't so sure. Even with the strange, tenuous mental connection that had existed between them on and off since he had called for her across the void of space, and she had somehow heard him, there were parts of him she still couldn't quite understand.

If he had been almost anyone else, she thought, she'd just drag him to bed and shake his emotions loose with the sheer force of her passion. Han would understand; she _knew_ he would. Although the two men had always butted heads like young stags in springtime, she wasn't so sure Han wouldn't have suggested it himself. But Luke was already half in this universe and half in another, and she didn't want to risk driving him completely into some far-off ascetic space where she'd never reach him again. Maybe this trip could be enough of a distraction, if only for a short time.

Idly flipping through menswear designs on her datapad, she added bookmarks and notations here and there. She would check them with Luke when he felt like talking again. There were so few visual records of the Jedi left after the Emperor's purge that they were going to have to trust his instincts as much as hers. She had followed his lead and employed minimal camouflage to her own appearance. Making a joke about trading eyeballs, she had covered her own dark eyes with blue lenses, and worn a large headscarf that covered her forehead and hair. Several more scarves were folded into her traveling case, as well as a few loose, flowing gowns and the highest-heeled shoes she could walk in. A soft sound broke the silence, nearly making her start.

“Black,” murmured Luke, not stirring or opening his eyes.

She looked up and turned to her companion. “What was that?”

“It has to be black,” he said, firmly. 

“Black is good,” she agreed, making a note. “Black makes a statement. It makes an impression.”

One corner of his mouth turned slightly upward. “And it doesn't show the dirt. Practical.”


End file.
